Saturday, April 24, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] This week in search 4/23/10

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 07:24 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: This week in search 4/23/10

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This week we announced a number of new developments:

Search for specific TV show episodes
As more and more full-length content is going online, we're making it easier to find the content you want by providing a more structured experience when you search for TV shows. This week, we launched a way to search for specific TV show episodes as part of this effort. Now, when you search for your favorite TV show in Google Videos, check the lefthand toolbar for "Episodes". By clicking on the links in the Search Options panel, you can browse by season to see all episodes, and drill down to see all sources for a specific episode.


Example searches: [desperate housewives] and [the simpsons]

Image support for RSS gadgets
For many of you who use iGoogle as your homepage, RSS feeds are a great way to get the latest news content, blog updates, recipes and celebrity gossip. And because pictures enhance the online experience, this week we added image support to our iGoogle feed gadgets for people in the U.S. We now support "Slideshow view" as well as "Headline and lead story view." You should notice the change now on your iGoogle page, and you will be able to edit the display setting of each feed by choosing "Edit settings" in the dropdown menu for your feeds.

Slideshow view

Headline and lead story view

Example feeds: [CNN], [the economist], [entertainment weekly], [national geographic]

Google Places
Also this week we announced that the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. With one out of five searches on Google related to location, we wanted to better connect Place Pages (which launched last September for more than 50 million places globally) to a tool that enables businesses to manage their Google presence. With this change, business owners will benefit from several new ways to expand their online presence, while making it easier for you to make better decisions about local shopping. From real-time coupon updates to interior photos of businesses on place pages, these ongoing enhancements will make local search all the more useful to you. The launch of Google Places is just the beginning of Google becoming more local. If you're a business owner and want to learn more, check out google.com/places.

Example place page: [mission mountain winery]

Hope you enjoy this week's features. Stay tuned for what's next!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/this-week-in-search-42310.html

[G] Measure the success of your AdWords campaigns

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 06:28 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Measure the success of your AdWords campaigns

Over the past few weeks, we've posted 4 videos that suggested small changes you can make to your AdWords account to help you improve your performance. This week, we'll provide you with some guidance for measuring the results of these changes.

With AdWords, you can see how successful your advertising is by monitoring the statistics in your account. Understanding these statistics allows you to assess your results and further tweak your campaigns for even better performance.

Take a look at this video to learn how to track and understand your AdWords results in order to fine tune your advertising.


Have you have found this series of videos useful for improving your advertising and growing your business? Let us know.

PostPosted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/04/measure-success-of-your-adwords.html

[G] Enabling social sharing with FeedFlare

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 06:28 PM PDT

AdSense for Feeds and FeedBurner Blog: Enabling social sharing with FeedFlare

Feed content is being constantly distributed via new channels and endpoints every day.   More and more, these new channels involve sharing your content in social networks and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz.

Recently, we launched our Socialize service to help you as the publisher distribute your feed via social networks, with the first network being Twitter.   If you use Blogger, you can already connect your feed to Buzz via the "connected sites" link in Buzz.

But it's equally important in the social world to make sure your subscribers can also share your feed content easily on these social networks.  FeedFlare helps enable this by allowing you to configure links in your feed that promote sharing.   You can do this by going to the Optimize tab FeedBurner and choosing FeedFlare, and then of course, adding some flare.

Now, we won't berate you for only doing the "bare minumum," nor do we recommend having "37 pieces of flare" in your feed - but we do think you should express yourself with at least a little flare that helps your subscribers move your content around these social networks a little easier.

To that end, just yesterday we enabled the official "Post to Google Buzz" FeedFlare in our catalog, which easily allows users to repost your content to Google Buzz, and then automatically updates the label with the number of times it was posted.



These links appear as so in your feed (though the exact presentation will vary depending on where your feed is being displayed):



Also included in our official catalog are "Share on Facebook" and others that may be relevant for your audience.  If you are an old time FeedBurner user, it may be time to revisit your FeedFlare setup and add some of these new ones.

In addition, if you don't see the FeedFlare you need, you can always develop one using the FeedFlare API which is documented in our FeedFlare Developer Guide.

Posted by Steve Olechowski, FeedBurner Team
URL: http://adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com/2010/04/enabling-social-sharing-with-feedflare.html

[G] Who Took 10 When? Census participation rates over time

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 03:26 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Who Took 10 When? Census participation rates over time


If you're a geo-data dork like me, you've probably been following the Google Maps and Google Earth displays of near-real-time mail participation rates for US Census 2010 across states, counties, places, and tracts, which we announced last month with the Census Bureau.

Now that the mail-in deadline has passed, we've wrapped up the daily participation rate data through April 19 in a Google Earth layer, so you can see how response rates progressed over time. It's a great example of using time stamps in a layer. Here's a preview of what you'll see in the layer:


To explore for yourself, check it out in your browser, or download the KML to open in Google Earth -- zoom in a bit to see the county level, and please be a bit patient as it might take a second or two to load each day's worth of data. If you'd like to explore the most recent data in more detail, including place and tract level data, you'll find that in our original layer.

Now that the big mail push is over, I'll have to sit patiently and bide my time as census takers visit households that didn't respond, and number-crunchers at the Census Bureau compile data. 2011's going to be fascinating for geo visualization...we can't wait to see all the great maps that folks make with the new data!

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/who-took-10-when-census-participation.html

[G] Enabling social sharing with FeedFlare

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 03:26 PM PDT

AdSense for Feeds and FeedBurner Blog: Enabling social sharing with FeedFlare

Feed content is being constantly distributed via new channels and endpoints every day.   More and more, these new channels involve sharing your content in social networks and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz.



Recently, we launched our Socialize service to help you as the publisher distribute your feed via social networks, with the first network being Twitter.   If you use Blogger, you can already connect your feed to Buzz via the "connected sites" link in Buzz.



But it's equally important in the social world to make sure your subscribers can also share your feed content easily on these social networks.  FeedFlare helps enable this by allowing you to configure links in your feed that promote sharing.   You can do this by going to the Optimize tab FeedBurner and choosing FeedFlare, and then of course, adding some flare.



Now, we won't berate you for only doing the "bare minumum," nor do we recommend having "37 pieces of flare" in your feed - but we do think you should express yourself with at least a little flare that helps your subscribers move your content around these social networks a little easier.



To that end, just yesterday we enabled the official "Post to Google Buzz" FeedFlare in our catalog, which easily allows users to repost your content to Google Buzz, and then automatically updates the label with the number of times it was posted.







These links appear as so in your feed (though the exact presentation will vary depending on where your feed is being displayed):







Also included in our official catalog are "Share on Facebook" and others that may be relevant for your audience.  If you are an old time FeedBurner user, it may be time to revisit your FeedFlare setup and add some of these new ones.



In addition, if you don't see the FeedFlare you need, you can always develop one using the FeedFlare API which is documented in our FeedFlare Developer Guide.



Posted by Steve Olechowski, FeedBurner Team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BurnThisRSS2/~3/rNKq3BY7g0w/enabling-social-sharing-with-feedflare.html

[G] Learn more about Google Places, all in one place

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 03:26 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Learn more about Google Places, all in one place


With a new name comes a fresh support experience. The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we've taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings. Here's an overview of the improvements we've made and our newest offerings:

Google Places Help Center: Here you can learn more about managing your business listing on Google, new features and how to report problems. This includes a revamped user guide, support channels, and more.

We've also made the new Help Center more interactive by adding a guided tour of the Place Page. Place Pages connect you to the best information about almost every place type of in the world. The Place Page overview is a fun and easy way to learn about all the different parts of the page and if you're a business owner, you can find out how you can add content to your business' Place Page.

Feedback for Google Places: Post your burning questions and awesome ideas to our new Google Moderator page. After you post, take a look at what other people are posting, and vote up the ideas you like the most. We'll keep the page open until May 21, 2010, and then our team will review the top questions and record video responses that we'll post in our Help Center.

Google Places Help Forum: Discuss with other users how to improve your listing, newly announced features, or issues you're encountering. We have dedicated volunteers known as "Top Contributors" who can help answer your questions and discuss your ideas. Google Employees will also be monitoring the forum to facilitate discussions in this forum and provide assistance when needed.

Google Places Webinars: Sign up for our webinars to learn about a variety of topics ranging from "Adding a Listing" up to "Enhancing a Listing". We're excited about providing a learning environment that allows us to interact more closely with you, the business owner who all these tools are made for! If you can't attend the webinars, don't worry - we'll post the videos on our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/googleplaces.

You'll find all these resources at google.com/support/places/.

Posted by Brianna Brekke, Senior Strategist, Google Places
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/learn-more-about-google-places-all-in.html

[G] Growing Up with Samba

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 12:32 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Growing Up with Samba

Next month Samba eXPerience 2010, the ninth international Samba conference for users and developers, will be held in Göttingen, Germany from May 3rd - 7th. Jeremy Allison, who works in the Google Open Source Programs Office, will be at the conference to hack on Samba and present his talk, "How to make a product with Samba" at 1:30 - 2:15 pm, Thursday May 6th (volcano ash permitting). His talk will cover the advantages and problems of using Samba in a storage product, and how to work with the Samba developer community.

The theme for this year's conference is "Growing Up," and Jeremy notes that at SambaXP 2010, "Microsoft engineers will be attending and giving a keynote at the conference for the second year running, which shows how important Microsoft now considers interoperability with Free Software projects."

To get more of Jeremy's thoughts on open source, you can read his columns or talk to him in Germany!

by Ellen Ko, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/growing-up-with-samba.html

[G] Content ID and Fair Use

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 12:32 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Content ID and Fair Use

Posted by Shenaz Zack, Product Manager

(cross-posted from the Official YouTube Blog)


Over the past decade, the evolution of the Internet has altered the landscape for both traditional media companies and the doctrine of fair use, and the media industry has tried to keep up. The new ways that consumers create and distribute content are not a niche phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people around the world now use the Web to connect and interact with content online, and a huge percentage of them go even further: they express themselves via parodies, celebrate their favorite videos with mashups, and use music in educational presentations. The people that upload these videos are typically the biggest fans, and are exactly the kinds of consumers rights holders should be embracing.


We've listened closely to our partners and we're constantly improving our content identification and management tools ("Content ID") to make sure they have choices in dealing with these different uses of their content on YouTube. Over 1,000 content owners use Content ID, and we've built it in a way that lets them account for fair uses of their content: they can easily create policies depending on the proportion of a claimed video that contains their work, or the absolute length of the clip used. For example, a record label might decide to block videos that contain over one minute of a given song, but leave up videos that contain less than one minute.


Since Content ID can't identify context (like "educational use" or "parody"), we give partners the tools to use length and match proportion as a proxy. Of course, it's not a perfect system. That's why two videos -- one of a baby dancing to one minute of a pop song, and another using the exact same audio clip in a videotaped University lecture about copyright law -- might be treated identically by Content ID and taken down by the rights holder, even though one may be fair use and the other may not. Rights holders are the only ones in a position to know what is and is not an authorized use of their content, and we require them to enforce their policies in a manner that complies with the law.


Still, to make sure that users also have choices when dealing with the content they upload to YouTube, we've made it easy for users to dispute inappropriate claims.

  • When you receive a notice in your account via Content ID, we tell you who claimed the content, and direct you to a form that lets you dispute the claim if you so choose.
  • If you believe your video is fair use, check the box that reads "This video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder." If you're not sure if your video qualifies, you can learn more about fair use here.
  • Once you've filed your dispute, your video immediately goes back up on YouTube.
  • From this point, the claimant then makes a decision about whether to file a formal DMCA notification, and remove the content from the site according to the process set forth in the DMCA.

Content ID has helped create an entirely new economic model for rights holders. We are committed to supporting new forms of original creativity, protecting fair use, and providing a seamless user experience -- all while we help rights owners easily manage their content on YouTube.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/04/content-id-and-fair-use.html

[G] Helping you read and write foreign scripts with Google Transliteration and Script Converter

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 09:07 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Helping you read and write foreign scripts with Google Transliteration and Script Converter

(Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog)

For many Internet users, it is not always easy to write in languages that use unique character sets like Hindi, Hebrew and Arabic. Most computer keyboards only allow for the input of Roman characters (the alphabet used by most Western languages) and converting between scripts can be difficult. To make this process easier we launched an improved version of Google Transliteration at the end of last year, a service which enables you to phonetically convert Roman letters into a variety of other scripts.

Today we're delighted to announce support for five new languages: Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese. This bring the total up to 22 languages spoken across Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. These new languages are currently available at http://www.google.com/transliterate.

Since you can't use Google Transliteration offline we also launched the transliteration based "Input Method Editor" (IME) earlier this year. Once you download and install the Google Transliteration IME (don't worry, it's free), you can type a word the way it sounds using Roman characters and the software will convert the word to its native script. For example, typing "hamesha" in Google Hindi IME transliterates into Hindi as: हमेशा.

As an improvement to the IME, we've recently added 5 more languages (Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya) as well as canonical schemes, macros and support for Windows 64-bit. You can read about all these powerful new features on the Google Transliteration IME help page.

Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can't read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that "namaste" is a greeting, however you may not be able to read 'नमस्ते' in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically. Script Converter currently supports 17 languages: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

So, try out these tools and let us know what you think.

Posted by New Melchizedec Sundararaj, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/helping-you-read-and-write-foreign.html

[G] What’s that barcode in your Google Places account?

Posted: 23 Apr 2010 09:07 AM PDT

Google LatLong: What's that barcode in your Google Places account?


If you manage a Google Places account for your business in the U.S., you'll now find a two-dimensional barcode - known as a QR code - on the right side of your business' dashboard page. If you have just one business listing, this is the page you're automatically taken to when you log in. If you have multiple listings, click "View report" to get to this page.


Your QR code is unique to your business, and it allows people with certain mobile Android-powered devices and iPhones to scan it and be taken directly to the mobile version of your Place Page. Once on the mobile Place Page, users can find any discounts that you may be offering, post Buzz about your place, instantly call your business, or get other basic information about your business. Currently, several apps on Android-powered devices and iPhones are fully supported; apps on other devices will take you directly to google.com when you scan the code. Here are some ideas for how you can use your unique QR code as a free marketing tool:
  • Add it to the back of business cards: Lots of you are already giving away business cards to your customers. Adding a QR code lets you add a lot more information, virtually, with your Place Page, and allows you to change information like discounts & real-time updates about your business without changing the card itself.
  • Add it to marketing materials: If you're running an ad, putting out a pamphlet, or handing out flyers, add a QR code to the corner. We're using QR codes in a series of new testimonials about Google Places, for example. (Make sure to keep some white space around the QR code to allow for proper scanning).
  • Put it in your window: If you've got a poster, a menu, or anything else in your window, a QR code lets customers remember you by scanning the code and saving your business as a personal favorite. We've got a sample poster with your unique code already on it, which is ready to print from your dashboard page.

To download your QR code, right click to save the image from the right side of your dashboard page.

Posted by Matt Reid, Google Places Engineer
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/whats-that-barcode-in-your-google.html
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